As summer swim season nears, some South Florida cities grappling with lifeguard shortage

FORT LAUDERDALE — As the summer season nears, many municipalities in South Florida are struggling to fill lifeguard positions, and the shortage is causing some cities to modify their pool operating hours.

The Driftwood Community Pool in Hollywood was empty Friday with no children showing up to attend a water safety course offered at the site.

“The reason we are not having session today is because we are short staffed in order to fully implement the program to it’s full capacity,” said Chadli Fernandez, superintendent of Hollywood Aquatic.

Despite efforts to hire, Hollywood has just 10 lifeguards and instructors but needs 20. The city is still working to bring in more as summer break approaches.

“We are either going to have to cut down or limit the number of instructional classes, opportunities for open swim, opportunities for adult programs,” Fernandez said. “Over all our general programs are going to be effected.”

What will not be impacted are the official City of Hollywood summer camps. 

“We are going to have to get extremely creative in order to provide the community with the necessary programs as we would have in the past,” Fernandez said.

The city of Miami is short staffed, too.

“We have enough life guards to open. We are still looking for about 25 more so we can operate fully,” said Chris Evans, the interim director of the Parks & Recreation Department.

He said they’ll get creative to make sure all their pools and programs are staffed, despite being down more than two dozen lifeguards.

“Sometimes during the peak hotness of the day we don’t have that many in attendance and that would be the first area we’re looking to adjust so it doesn’t affect our morning aerobics class for our seniors and our learn-to-swim program for our 2,000 campers,” Evans said.

Martin Lythgoe is a regular at Jose Marti Pool, and said public pools are important to the community. 

“You see people coming from downtown to swim, during summer breaks, school breaks you see kids from the neighborhood coming to the pool,” he said.

We checked with Broward County. Parks and Rec tells us they are fully staffed with their life guards.

Coral Springs has a shortfall and is trying to hire an additional 30 lifeguards. 

They released a statement to CBS News Miami that said: “Like many cities across the nation, The City of Coral Springs has experienced a shortage of lifeguards in recent months. We have been actively working to recruit and train new lifeguards, especially with the approaching summer season. We understand that residents will be looking for safe and fun ways to cool off throughout the city.”

The city said it has taken other steps, including partnering with the local Fire Academy to identify and cross-train recruits to work in lifeguarding positions while they complete their fire training; having its Aquatics team members at events to provide information about lifeguard positions.

Anyone interested in becoming a lifeguard for Coral Springs was asked to visit CoralSprings.gov/Jobs

Miami-Dade county is looking to hire 50 additional lifeguards to bring them to full staffing.

In a statement, the agency said its lifeguard shortage would not close any of its 19 pools completely, but it could affect pool hours.

The Miami-Dade Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces Department said it was committed to ensure every resident has access to safe, affordable, inclusive and outstanding recreational programs and experiences for its facilities, including its 19 public pools.

The department said it launched a recruitment effort in January and is expecting that “if all goes as planned with recruitment efforts,” Miami-Dade Parks plan will be fully staffed or close to fully staffed by July 2023.

CBS News Miami  did not immediately hear back after reaching out to Fort Lauderdale, which has been dealing with lifeguard shortages for several years.